


In Search of Lost Puppies

by navaan



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Background Relationships, Companions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Gen Work, Time Travel, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 04:51:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13023600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: Missy sends him on his quest to find an old companion - and Martha may just send him on a new quest.





	In Search of Lost Puppies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Clocketpatch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/gifts).



She's playing the piano again without a word, but she throws him a significant look.

The Doctor has known the Master nearly all his life, a constant in a sea of changes that had marked his life beyond Gallifrey.

“Is that why it's so hard for you to let go?” Missy asks from her prison with the transparent walls.

“That?”

He has brought her something to eat from the cafeteria and she turns up her nose at it and rolls her eyes when she notices his disapproving look. “Me,” she says as if it’s nothing and yet even looking at her he knows there is _too_ much between them and he sees it - all their lives, all their times together, apart and pitted against each other - whenever he cares to look at the way time floods around them. Theirs has always been an exceptional friendship-rivalry. It’s not something to ever be unseen. “You could have let them execute me and I would have deserved it.”

 _Yes,_ he thinks, and, _no_.

“This is about the puppies, Doctor. The dear, little puppies. _The_ puppy, really.” Missy nods as if she understands everything that’s hidden under the surface of these words.

“Puppies?” He doesn't move closer to her cage, just watches as her hands move across the keys. His last run in with a puppy was on Torcal VII and it had been an unpleasant affair. Nobody in their right mind chose to cross the dogs of Torcal VII. He hadn’t been in his right mind then, he supposed, but searching.

“Earth,” Missy said and waved her hand around. “Your little granddaughter. Most of your lost puppies. It all comes back to Earth. That’s why we’re here. Because you made a promise to protect this place. I wonder. Is this because of all of them? Or because of that puppy you never really called wife? Or is this about the puppy you can't even remember? Because I remember _her_. And she was a good puppy, but nothing special.”

Her repetition of the word “puppy” stirs a memory that never quite make it to the surface and with the shrill sound of her hitting the keys a little too hard, it drives him up the wall.

“Her names was Clara,” he says, as if he has any sliver of memory left of her. But he hasn’t.

“Yes,” Missy agrees and makes a face. “That one.”

They both know she hit a nerve.

That’s why she can’t stop there.

“My poor, poor Doctor,” she says and is softly swaying back and forth as she starts playing a cheerful tune. “It’s the mystery. It’s the the fact that you don’t remember this one sad puppy. Because look here - in the end it’s you and me. Where are all the others? Say, Doctor, what happened to dear Martha and her family? Do you know? You don’t!”

She smiles.

He leaves.

It’s not because it hits too close to home.

* * *

The university is many respects a blessing. He feels like in the old days when he and Susan kept to themselves in the middle of this race of not-yet-space-travellers with potential and all the faults that come with it. He is surrounded by life and yet it’s easy to keep himself apart.

“1000 years of this,” he says to Nardole.

“That’s the deal.”

“That’s the deal,” he repeats.

And he doesn’t think about it.

About “puppies.”

Although Missy’s voice drifts to him in the quiet moments when he has too much time to watch the students.

“Chips again?” the girl in cafeteria asks and her smile is very bright and her untamable hair is up a haphazard bun. Her eyes are shining.

“Chips again,” he agrees.

All the way back he thinks he must have seen her before somewhere.

In the classroom.

Maybe.

He doesn’t pay attention as much as before when he could go out and travel time and space unhindered - and not alone.

 _With another lost puppy,_ Missy’s voice chastises. He misses the moustache twirling Master sometimes.

* * *

Nardole doesn't let him out of his sight for a week and the Tardis hums softly at him, calling him away.

“Sorry, girl,” he says and leaves her standing in the office corner. Instead of taking her out for a spin, he strolls through London. There are aliens abound. There always are. It’s Earth. 

Someone always wants to take over the world.

The only thing he knows for sure today is, that it’s not the Master.

Today he runs from Gorgonites and ends up bumping into someone in front of a coffee shop and a coffee-to-go lands on the pavement.

“Oi, watch where you’re going!” the woman shouts at him in the most unfriendly tone. But it’s all so familiar. He looks at her and her eyes are twinkling with the same kind of offended-unfriendliness. 

Donna.

The marked down name on her cup reads “Temple-Noble”.

“What?” she asks and _glowers_ at him.

He grins. She can’t recognize him - wouldn’t recognize him if he had the right face and it’s better that way. But he grins anyway, at her turned up nose, her posh get-up and the spilled coffee.

“It was my fault,” he says. “Let me get you a new one.”

Donna doesn’t remember anything of their travel together. The Doctor has forgotten about a companion named Clara. They’re like peas in a pod. Just not like peas in a pod at all.

Sometimes down the lines, he has learned about buying coffee though and he is proud to hand Donna hers with a big smile and the thought: _Not all puppies were lost._

* * *

Of course, he tells himself that none of it - Missy, Donna, Clara - none of it has anything to do with ending up on the doorstep of Martha Jones, privateer alien hunter.

“You make me sound like a pirate,” she says and laughs, eyeing the cup of coffee suspiciously, right after making a face at him. “You’ve grown old.” She grins brightly. He dreadlocks spill over her back, making her look young and carefree. She takes his changed face, the changed manners, the sudden appearance in stride. She must know so much about what’s in his UNIT file.

“I… was a pirate,” he says and thinks about that. “At some point. You’re no longer with UNIT.”

“No.”

“Not Torchwood?”

“No,” she says. “Torchwood moved on. Jack has been busy.”

“I can imagine.” 

He sits awkwardly in her kitchen. “Where is Mickey?” he asks after a while.

“Up north. Gargonite infestation in Edinburgh. Nasty business. What are you up to.”

“Teaching,” he says and she laughs at him. It’s nice to know that after all she’s been through - going from doctor, to time traveller, to freedom fighter, to UNIT doctor, to soldier, to married woman and alien hunter - she can still smile like that. “Do you ever regret it?”

“Travelling with you?” She takes a sip of her coffee and ponders it. He appreciates that. He wants an honest answer. Finally she sets the cup down and watches him carefully, trying to read this new face that to him isn’t new anymore. She know him too well. “Some of it, yes, but no. And you miss it.”

“Travelling with you?” he asks and nods.

“Travelling with someone. All of us. A new person.”

“I’m just stuck for a while.” And he doesn’t mention the Master, not to her, he couldn’t.

“Yeah, about that. Slow path isn’t for you. You’re too curious.”

“I can stay put.”

“If you can, then more than your hair grew old, Doctor.” She laughs.

“I made a promise. I’m keeping the promise.”

“Ah,” she says and nods. “That sounds like the Doctor, protecting all of us.”

* * *

For old time's sake, they push the Gargonites out of London together - and it’s all in a day’s work.

* * *

“What are you so chipper about?” Missy looks at him sourly over the piano.

“No puppies were lost,” he tells her and waits for her to play again.

* * *

The cafeteria girl sits in his class the next week and ina sea of students who try to keep up, _she_ listens with a dazzled expression as he talks about space and time.

* * *

He calls Martha - on the actual phone. He’s turned human like that.

“Sounds like she’d love it,” Martha says and he can hear the smile in her voice. “Mickey says to tell you not to do anything stupid.”

“Tell Mr. Jones to let the grown ups talk,” he shoots back and doesn’t even remember how this started, the snarky non-rivalry with Mickey who was Martha’s husband and used to be Rose’s boyfriend.

“Watch her, Doctor. Show her the world.”

There is no sadness or longing in Martha’s words, just the kindness of friendly advice. 

He knows he made a promise that ties him to Earth. But he has a time machine.

“What would you do if you could travel again?” 

“Oh,” Martha says. “I’m not without my resources.” She winks and says: “I think I’d settle down somewhere with a big bazar. Or with Shakespeare. I’m sure he’d take the husband too.”

In the background Mickey says something and Martha laughs.

* * *

Three days later Bill Potts loses a girl she has a crush on to an alien ship that is recruiting - and they’re off to see time and space.

* * *

Bill runs from one little booth to the next, delighted at everything she sees. The Tardis will get them back in time for nobody even to know they were gone and the Doctor for the moment just delights in seeing the world through Bill’s curiosity. It makes him feel young again.

Across the street someone catches his eye and he looks up startled.

Martha Jones is leaning against a wooden cart and she is smiling. She’s older, but no less human, no less beautiful. She waves at him.

He waves back and watches her leave.

“Nice planet,” he says to nobody in particular. _To settle down._

“Are you kidding? It’s amazing!” Bill shouts and her laugh is infectious.


End file.
